Ideology After Poststructuralism: Experiences of Identity in a Globalising World (Social Sciences Research Centre Series)

Ideology is a hotly disputed term in social and political theory. It continues to generate intellectual dispute more than 200 years after its birth in the fervour of the French Revolution. Most recently, post-structuralists such as Foucault and Deleuze launched a strident critique claiming that'there is no such thing as ideology', creating a theoretical environment which polarises critical opinion either for or against ideology. Ideology after Poststructuralism aims to end this culture of antagonism by bringing together leading scholars in the field to establish a dialogue between post-structuralism and ideology critique. For the post-structuralists there is a need to generate a sensitive account of ideology so as to bolster their claim that they have a significant contribution to make to social and political criticism. For the ideology theorists there is a need to engage with the post-structuralist critique of ideology without taking the assumptions that post-structuralists have so thoroughly criticised. The essays in this book show how the intellectual posturing of recent decades has closed off debate to the detriment of both post-structuralism and ideology critique. Ideology is one of the most hotly disputed terms in the lexicon of social and political theory. It continues to generate intellectual dispute more than 200 years after its birth in the fervour of the French Revolution. The most recent battle-lines around the idea of ideology have formed in the aftermath of the strident critique of ideology launched by post-structuralists such as Foucault and Deleuze. Their claim that there is no such thing as ideology has created a theoretical environment which polarizes critical opinion either for or against ideology. This work aims to break with this culture of antagonism by bringing together leading scholars in the field to establish a dialogue between post-structuralism and ideology critique. For the post-structuralists there is a need to generate a sensitive account of ideology so as to bolster their claim that they have a significant contribution to make to social and political criticism. For the ideology theorists there is a need to engage with the post-structuralist critique of ideology without taking the assumptions that post-structuralists have so thoroughly criticized. The essays in this book aim to show how the intellectual posturing of recent decades has closed off debate in this area to the detriment of both post-structuralism and ideology critique Annotation. "Ideology is a hotly disputed term in social and political theory. It continues to generate intellectual dispute more than 200 years after its birth in the fervour of the French Revolution. Poststructuralists such as Foucault and Deleuze have claimed that 'there is no such thing as ideology', creating a theoretical environment which polarises critical opinion either for or against ideology." "Ideology After Poststructuralism aims to end this culture of antagonism by bringing together leading scholars in the field to establish a dialogue between poststructuralism and ideology critique. For the poststructuralists there is a need to generate a sensitive account of ideology so as to bolster their claim that they have a significant contribution to make to social and political criticism. For the ideology theorists there is a need to engage with the poststructuralist critique of ideology without taking for granted the assumptions that poststructuralists have so thoroughly criticised. The chapters in this book show how the intellectual posturing of recent decades has closed off debate to the detriment of both poststructuralism and ideology critique."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory.

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Ideology was proposed by Count de Tracy in 1796 as a unified science of ideas and has lived on as a theoretical concept among many social and political theorists, but has spurred the opprobrium of poststructuralist theorists. Malesevi'c (political science and sociology, NUI, UK) and MacKenzie (politics, Queen's U. of Belfast, Northern Ireland) present eight contributions from equal numbers of poststructural and ideology theorists. Efforts are made to critique ideology theory from a poststruc tural standpoint without a blanket rejection of the theory. Other chapters attempt to integrate some poststructural criticisms in order to maintain ideology theory as a relevant analytical concept. Distributed by Stylus. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)